


Addiction and Restriction

by GraceEliz



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dai Bendu, Deathsticks, Gen, Healer Anakin, Hurt/Comfort, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Obi-Wan Kenobi's bad coping habits, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, angst with optimism, deathsticks as a force numbing vice, recovering from addiction, the fic in which Obi-Wan is doing his best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26234440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: He approaches a stall of little boxes, white and cream and blue and all colours, marked with symbols he recognises. What are they – oh, yes, they’re addictive substance symbols. Under his probing fingers the flimsi-card is smooth, sliding, and he eyes them curiously.“They’ll make you forget,” the dealer says, voice the deep smoker’s rasp of a long term addict. They lean on the pole of the tent, sharp eyes watching the flick of Obi-Wan’s fingers with the mistrust of a criminal.He raises his fair eyebrows dubiously. “You reckon?”The dealer, all wrinkles and sundamaged skin, shrugs, the stick in the corner of their mouth wobbling. “Works for most people.”
Relationships: Aayla Secura & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Quinlan Vos
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	Addiction and Restriction

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhhh I'm so pleased this is done.

_i  
_

The market of Corellia is every child’s image of the phrase “black market”: black tents, colourful awnings, trays and tables and boxes of every illegal product or illicit pleasure that can be quantified and priced up. Tall buildings cast shadows, barely illuminated by the vibrant lights of the cafés and opium dens. Master Jinn has wandered off, as he always does, swayed perhaps by an animal or a pretty face – he does have his vices, Master Jinn, but they’re more or less in line with the way they live their lives. More or less, depending on the particular situation. Less, he’d be willing to bet.  
He approaches a stall of little boxes, white and cream and blue and all colours, marked with symbols he recognises. What are they – oh, yes, they’re addictive substance symbols. Under his probing fingers the flimsi-card is smooth, sliding, and he eyes them curiously. 

“They’ll make you forget,” the dealer says, voice the deep smoker’s rasp of a long term addict. They lean on the pole of the tent, sharp eyes watching the flick of Obi-Wan’s fingers with the mistrust of a criminal. 

He raises his fair eyebrows dubiously. “You reckon?”

The dealer, all wrinkles and sundamaged skin, shrugs, the stick in the corner of their mouth wobbling. “Works for most people.”

“And they’re narcotic?” There is a lot he’s trying to repress. 

“Look, mate,” says the dealer, removing the stick with two fingers and stabbing it towards him, “You could be the Jedi kriffin Grandmaster himself and these things would block it.” Alright, rude, but that’s a fairly convincing argument, delivered with conviction. 

Such innocuous little boxes they are, stacked by colour and laid out in rows, and they hold promise of relief – oblivion – an end to the Sight plaguing him, sleep and waking. “I’ll be able to sleep?”

“Yeah man, you’ll sleep through a kriffin war.”

After a tense moment in which the Force is silent, waiting, and his entire upbringing is slapping him upside the head because this is a horrible idea, he drops the credits down on the tray. “Gimme three boxes.”

The dealer grins, straightening. “Pleasure doing business. Do let us know how it goes.”

Obi-Wan slips the packs into his satchel, tipping his hat in half-respect with a grunt. They’re moving on in four hours, back to Coruscant and home and then, and then, he can try them. He can sleep. 

Deathsticks can kill a human his age in a decade. 

“Obi! I found a lead for the case,” Master Jinn calls, emerging from some tiny particularly dubious back-alley; Obi-Wan resists the urge to send him a poisonous glare only through a rapid plea for patience to the Force, which caresses his mind with a sorrowful tenderness. The Force knows, the Force cries. 

Kriff this, he thinks. “Have you so?” 

His Master indicates the Rodian at his elbow. “Ela can get us to the dealer.”

Yeah, no. “I think I’ll go back to the Temple,” Obi-Wan breathes with as little disgust as he can muster. A shower, dear stars above, a hot shower, and real food, and his friends, and Master Yoda. He really, really misses Master Yoda’s gentle guidance and no-nonsense tutoring. “Master Yoda is expecting me.”

Master Jinn frowns, concerned. “Are you certain?”

Is he certain? Is he, Master Jinn? 

“Right, right,” the man concedes. “You know where the pickup is.”

“I do.”

“And your visions?”

“Will be fine until then,” promises the teenager, carefully not at all thinking about the three white boxes offering to numb his senses, tucked hidden and secret in the bottom of his satchel. “Promise, Master.”

Jinn smiles, leaning forward to brush his hand affectionately over Obi-Wan’s slender shoulders. “Be safe.”

“I will,” he promises, hiding the taste of the lie behind his shields. Deathsticks are not safe. 

He holes up under an awning overlooking the landing pads, nestled up on a tower of crates between the stone walls and the metal balcony of a teeming club, smoke and the tang of booze floating down to him. A good sniper-nest. There is a way of half-lighting a saber that causes sparks which can be held and directed using the Force, as they come from the kyber crystal. With a flick of his nail, Obi-Wan sets the deathstick alight, ensuring the packet is well closed and in the flap of his bag. The smell is odd, somewhere between burning wood and melt-hot tar, sticking to his throat. For a moment, he just sits on the crate watching the red-orange glow, feeling like he should be back on Melida/Daan, feeling like anything but a Jedi Padawan. Right then. It’s a pleasant observation he doesn’t shake when he raises the stick to his mouth, and an even bigger surprise that the first inhale doesn’t burn and stick and close his lungs as he expected. It’s…nice. 

Relaxing. Numbing. As if a fog is spreading from his mouth to his brain, stifling, wrapping his Force Sensitivity in wool. 

Oh, gods. Greedy for peace, he sucks in another lungful, blowing it out in a grey-white cloud. Up above the party-goers hoot and roar, and glasses smash, but he is hidden from it all in his shadows and crates and sticky smell of deathstick smoke. 

Oh he’ll hate to admit it, later on, but he lies to his pickup – a sweet but dangerous Archivist Knight who’s stopped off for him on her way back to Coruscant. “You stink of deathstick.”

He shrugs. “Lot of it in the air, on Corellia.” Not a lie, but certainly no admittance. 

“Sets off my lungs. Sonic is in there,” the Knight directs, and he goes, because he too wants the stink of his sins off his skin, even though he can taste it like old wood in his mouth. 

And then he lies to his Master, and then to Bant, and to Siri, and Garen, and Reeft, and when Quinlan finally catches him, because of course he always knew Quinlan would, he is almost relieved. At least he doesn’t have to lie to his family anymore. Secrets are in his nature, the hoarding and handling and dealing of them, but keeping this a secret? It hurts. It aches.  
It feels like dreamlessness, and that is the worst part. The comfort. The freedom. He’s addicted to it, but he doesn’t care. 

_ii  
_

“Those things are going to kill you,” Quin tells him, one night out on the balcony of the Jinn-Kenobi quarters with the noise of the city floating towards them. Their Masters are down in the undercity, digging out some gang member or other who’s been trafficking kyber crystals from stolen Jedi blades. 

Obi shrugs. 

He shifts so he can look his shorter friend in the eyes. “I don’t want you to die.”

“There is no death, there is the Force,” states his friend, turns away in his guilt, and his pale hand shakes as he snaps his finger to form a spark to light the stick. It’s a skill most Jedi don’t have. 

His dreads move a little with the Force of his sigh. “Little brother. Please.”

“With these,” says Obi, “I can sleep. I don’t dream. I don’t See anything.”

Quin tips his head. “Freedom.”

Ashes fall from the tip of the stick, white and minuscule. “Something like that.” They stand together in the dark and the cold and the smoke rises in a weak line above them, and they are silent, because they don’t have any more words to say. 

_iii  
_

He wakes up during the night every few hours. Always has, always will: it is a part of being a slave-child who can sense where trackers are hidden. The Amavikka could pass through his home at any moment, and he must be ready for them. The apartment, three days after them moving in – four days after Naboo – still smells of bleach and new things, which isn’t a surprise: Obi-Wan’s friend had told him that this was a newly refurbished one. They were the new occupants. It had been empty, they said, for a few years, after the last Master-Padawan pair had graduated and moved to new postings. 

“Fuck, Bant,” he hears his new – what had been the word? Jaieh, yes – teacher half shout. He freezes in bed, heart pounding, and everyone out there freezes too. Listening. The voices restart, but far lower. He frowns, wondering, before realising they’d been trying to not wake him up. Do they know he’s awake? What will happen if they do? They won’t hurt him, but will he be punished in some other way? 

“We love you, brother,” Bant says, her voice muffled by the door. They must be standing fairly close to it now, instead of where the sofa and armchairs are. He never hears them move unless they want him to; it’s off-putting. “You are not ever alone, either of you.”

His Jaieh responds quietly, and he hears footsteps approach his door. Afraid – of what will they do if they know he heard, of finding out what they were talking about – he buries himself under the quilt, hiding like a baby, but all that happens is Obi-Wan sighs a bit sadly, and whispers to sleep well before closing the door the crack it had been opened. Shaken, Anakin curls into a ball, and misses his mom, the sameness of life in the slave quarter of Tattooine where everything was predictable if depressing. Everyone here is really nice, and friendly, even Master Mace when he isn’t tired or grumpy or feeling sick says Siri, but it’s all just so new. And kind of cold, but he doesn’t want to get up for another blanket, because he hasn’t been given one, and his Jaieh is a man shaking through withdrawal, but not a man who hurts to get his fix. Obi-Wan is hurting because he has to stop the stick habit: Anakin was in the Council meeting, with the Council and Obi-Wan and Bant and a Mind Healer and the nautolan who removed his chip and put it in a jar for him when they said Obi-Wan would keep him, only if the deathsticks stopped. 

They’d looked concerned by the determination when Obi-Wan told them he would by Convergence. Of course, Anakin doesn’t know what Convergence is yet, but it’s soon, and that’s why his Jaieh is shaking and shivering and snipping at people. He also does little more than show Anakin around, voice hoarse and scratchy and far from the delicacy of the regal accent he had before, drink tea, and sleep or cry. It’s just too much, so he snuggles around the teddy that Aayla gave him – a little knit Twi'lek in pink – and tries to go to sleep. 

_v  
_  
Jaieh Obi-Wan is sat on the red couch that apparently was a gift from Garen when he cleared out his quarters to go on long-term rotation with the agricorps as a pilot. His slender shoulders are curled in, swamped by the monochromatic soft blanket that had been from his language tutor – Greg, he’d introduced himself as, an aging Twi'lek with eyebags – and his face is hidden in his hands. “Are you alright?”

Obi-Wan jerks his head up, eyes red. “Do I look alright?” he snaps, and then his eyes widen and his face falls when Anakin flinches away, guilt and remorse and that emotion he now knows as self-loathing flaring bright in the Force before his Master’s metal shields slam back up. “Anakin, sweetheart, I am so sorry. Kriff, I’m so – my heart is bleeding with my repentance, dear one.” 

Anakin nods slowly, approaching like he’d approach a krayt dragon, palms up and fingers loose, just in case. This broken shell of a man isn’t threatening, but Ani has seen him spar. He’s reasonably certain Obi-Wan could kill him with his bare hands. “Is there something you need?”

“No, no.” Another of those forced, tremulous smiles even as he accepts Anakin’s small hand in his rough one. He squeezes gently. “Why don’t you make us some tea, mm?”

He will, for his new teacher’s sake, ignore the fact he must make the tea because Obi-Wan’s whole body is trembling. Any attempt to lift the pot will end in disaster he is sure. “Okay.”

Boil the water, then pour it in the pot: simple black dried tea, in a net-like bag, bracing and more bitter than he likes, but with milk (milk!) and sugar (sugar!!) it’s really rather tasty, and, in Bant’s gentle voice, just what the Healers ordered. It takes a few minutes to brew, so he tidies away the pots that were drying, very careful not to clink them against each other even though he knows that it won’t be a problem. The fear of punishment is a stinging one he won’t shift easily. The tea is brewed, so he carefully pours a large mugful, and does as Siri had suggested and fishes the bag out so the leftovers don’t become too bitter to drink. Cool tea is plenty drinkable. He prefers it cold, Temple-stone cold in a way nothing ever got back on Tattooine, and a little milk and sugar. 

“Here you go,” he whispers. Jaieh Obi-Wan has a headache. It echoes down their bond in throbs; his teacher must be in a lot of pain. “Just how you like it.”

The cups are of a type of sturdy plastoid with the texture of the smooth pottery of the green cups that visitors use, so that if they fall, they will be unbroken. They were a gift more for Anakin than Obi-Wan, but their friends know it it Obi-Wan who needs them the most. 

“Force, I’m freezing,” mutters his Jaieh, wrapping his hand around his mug and Anakin – 

Anakin – 

“Anakin?” 

He states at his Jaieh, at this man who is kind and gentle and damaged, and he is shaking and tears fill his eyes, and he is afraid. “No – no you can’t be – you can’t be cold, Jaieh,” he begs, and he lunges forwards and the tea falls to the floor but he is wrapping his Obi-Wan as warmly as he can, as he once swaddled the babies, and he presses his wrist into his forehead and cuddles in close because cold means death. “Don’t be cold, Jaieh!”

His Obi-Wan is getting worried, now, and that’s wrong – he shouldn’t be worrying over him when he’s cold because being cold is bad, being cold means he’s too sick, and what can he do? “Anakin, it’s alright.”

“No it isn’t!”

“Please don’t shout, sweetheart,” pleads Obi-Wan, and Anakin flinches because he’s just trying to help but he hurt him, he hurt his Jaieh, and what if they send him away? “Oh, beloved, they won’t take you away, no, I’m just cold because I’m too thin.”

Anakin shakes his head into his Jaieh’s blanketed shoulder, clinging tight to the soft fabric as though he can keep him warm just by the Force of his grip. “But people die when they get cold,” he sobs. 

“Oh, Anakin,” breathes Obi-Wan, so sadly, so brokenly, “I’m not dying, darling, I’m going to be fine, I’m just too thin and it makes me cold,” but that’s a lie, because he’s also shivering from the withdrawal, from breaking a habit by force. 

_vi  
_

He is ten. It is their first ever true away mission, not like the Gathering to Illum for saber-crystals or a trip to the undercity for information. This little moon is warmish, and woodsy, and smells like the Kashykk Garden of the Fountains. Smoke from the banked fire winds up between the towering trees to the stars. Anakin’s question is burning under his breastbone more than ever before. 

“Obi?” 

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“When did you, um,” he trails off a little, not sure how exactly to bring it up, only knowing he must or the question will fizz and burble in him until he breaks and blurts out something unkind. 

_Better to be silent than cruel, sweetheart.  
_

“When I was sixteen,” his beloved Master answers easily. “I distinctly remember two days after my seventeenth birthday having three sticks left and being so pissed off I couldn’t have them, because even though Qui was in the next town over it was raining, and the smell sticks.” Obi-Wan leans back, considering, eyeing the twig he’s been chewing; Anakin doesn’t care for such a minty taste and dropped his into the smouldering charcoal. “He must have picked up on it. I know he caught me a few times when we got back. I got better with it, after I turned nineteen.” Better with what, he doesn’t specify, and he tries not to wonder about it because he is a little bit nervous of the answer he will receive. 

Anakin really, really wants to hear why, know all the whys of Obi-Wan Kenobi Jedi Knight, but he knows better than to ask after prying into such a sore topic for the pair of them. “Thank you.” His mom, and Obi-Wan, and Bant, have not raised a heathen. Gratitude is to be shown for an offering of trust or exchange of stories. 

His master tucks him into his side where he is surrounded by spicy cloak-fabric and warmth. “Always, sweetheart. Now, you need to try sleep some.”

“Tell me a story. The sirens one.”

“Listen well, and follow my voice. In the olden days when knights roamed the galaxy there was a man whose voice was soft as silk and rang like silver,” begins Obi-Wan, and he smiles, because Obi-Wan tells this story the best. 

_vii  
_

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit, obviously.” He flicks the tiny stub of the stick in his direction, but the wind carries it away down towards the glowing lights of the city. Has he managed to get the whole pack down? 

Quin roll his eyes, leaning his shoulder on the door jamb. “Thanks for that, bro. What can I do?”

Obi flails backwards, Force presence locked up tighter than the vaults deep down below, impenetrable steel. “Fuckall.”

“Gotta be something.” There was always something they could do, even when Obi thought he’d hit rock bottom – when you’re down, the only thing left to do is get back up. 

“Nope,” his friend bites out, reaching for the pack on the balcony. Quin knows before he makes contact that it will be empty; he knows before Obi moves that tonight will be a worse night than usual, after this relapse. “Ah! Just – fuck,” he hisses, snarls even, hands wrapped around the wood of the balcony as if by clinging tight enough the trembling will stop. “I want... I want Satine,” he gasps, sounding hopeless and desperate and depressed. 

Honestly, they should have known, or at the very least half-expected. Nothing ever goes easy, with Obi. Not his apprenticeship, although once Qui-Gon pulled his head out of his arse things went far smoother, and they’d been really very affectionate with each other; not lessons; not young love. He leans properly against the wall, drawing his best friend into a hug. “You’ll get there.”

“Yeah?”

Quin nods, hugging his sadly fragile friend as close as he can manage, their heat mingling against the chill of the night. “Of course.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Obi croaks, clinging with a fervency he hasn’t felt since those early days when the Force around Obi felt like a grieving parent. Tonight it swirls sorrowfully, curling in concerned spirals, pushing and pushing for them to move back inside away.

_viii  
_

Today is a bad day. Anakin knows this, because Obi-Wan is still in bed. He hasn’t spoken to anyone, not even Bant or Uncle Quin, and he always speaks to them. Always. He has to: they all live together, and there’s nowhere to hide from Bant and her caring.  
“Obi-Wan?”

Under the heaped grey blankets sounds a low noise, like a wounded animal, and Anakin cringes, lowers his voice. “Obi-Wan?”

The heap of his Jaieh stirs slowly, a flash of skin, his hand, showing under the covers. “Ani?”

He frowns. Obi-Wan doesn’t slur – always pronounces Ani short and sharp, not drawing the vowels out into Ahh-nee. His language tutor has a fancy accent and passed it on to Obi-Wan, because Obi’s first language is Dai Bendu, and he had to learn Basic when he was four. “Are you okay?”

There comes a shudder. “Will be.”

“Oh,” whispers Anakin, and wonders what he can do. If his Jaieh is shivering, that means he’s cold, right? He needs to make sure he isn’t feverish. At least here there is enough water to wash a fever away. The bed is low, like many of the Jedi beds, but not so low as his own, and it’s no effort to kneel on it and somewhat helplessly press his hands to Obi-Wan’s head. What’s a normal sort of fever temperature here, where body heat is lower anyway, because there aren’t two suns? “Obi?”

The man in question hums, still shaking like a leaf blown upon, and Anakin bites his lip. He can’t decide if his Jaieh is running a temperature, or if it’s just the result of being curled under all the blankets like a sick tooka. 

“M’okay, sweetheart,” Obi-Wan rasps. 

Anakin slides under the covers and cuddles in to his Jaieh. If they’re together, maybe he won’t be cold, and the shivering will stop, and then he’ll feel better and they can get out of bed and go down to the garden with the purple flowers the size of his two fists and meditate. Meditation always helps Jaieh feel better. “Have you been having visions?”

Slowly, the too-thin body of his teacher-father rolls over, and he wraps Anakin up in his arms. He smells fever-hot, and sweaty, but that’s okay, because it means he’s pushing through. “Not today, beloved.”

Cautiously, he strums the bond between them, testing to see how his Jeiah really feels. All he can see is warmth and affection, and the distant frigid steel of Obi-Wan’s mental shields, and whilst apparently that isn’t great it is also normal, especially for Obi-Wan Kenobi, so he drops it, and just snuggles in and hopes his Jaieh gets some sleep. 

_ix  
_

You are the chosen one, little brother, and you are like me, of the Dark Places. 

The curiosity of the Dark presence backs off, replaced by a blinding flare of white Light, tender and parental and protective but still too much. 

Oh, let him sleep, Brother, our little brother has a hard enough path ahead of him without you interfering.  
A caress in the Force of shadows, then a half-reproachful brush of light to remove the shadow left behind of the touch, and Anakin wakes up with a scream trapped in his teeth. He pants, clawing at his bed. Blanket. Wall. The light. Window, shutters closed. The door, a sliver of light. Obi-Wan, out in the sitting room. Nobody else is home, it seems. 

“Obi?” He doesn’t like this, this childish terror that if he leaves his bed the creatures calling him little brother will come to him. “Obi!”

The door opens quickly, and there is his young Jaieh, ruffled and wrecked, but here as he always is. “Anakin?” he asks in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare,” he trembles, and there are tears in his eyes, and he’s scared of the things touching his brain, “come make it go away.”

Obi drops onto the bed, wrapping Anakin up in his own blanket, the one that smells like the spicy scent that Garen had got him as a present. “Okay.”

So they sit in the dark, and shiver together, one through fear and one through habit. The addict and the orphan, thinks Anakin. Sounds like a song in a cantina, or a story on the holonet that ends in tears – maybe one that ends in the father’s death and child’s adoption, or in separation and eventual reunion on the father’s deathbed. Something people read and cry over and recommend to their friends. “Obi? Are you feeling better, today?”

“Just cold, my sunshine, just cold.”

Anakin nods decisively. “Then you need to eat more like we keep telling you to.”

His Jaieh eyes him. “Bant really is going to make a healer out of you, isn’t she?”

_x  
_

Anakin knows that his Jaieh struggles, and he wants to help, but to help he needs to have more of an understanding, and that means asking. Healing 101: communication with the patient is of the utmost importance. Sadly, he hasn’t started the unit on Healer – Patient relations yet, but he knows his Obi-Wan pretty damn well, after three years, and so he just asks.  
“Jaieh?”

His teacher-father smiles broadly, leaning back in his study-room chair. Still a good day, then. His glasses catch the light from his datapads, and the light diffusing through the blind on the window makes his hair look a richer, deeper red than usual. “Anakin, sweetheart. Is everything okay?”

“Sure, but I uh. I want – need to ask you something.”

Obi-Wan nods, pulling him up into his lap and wrapping his flowing robes around them as if he is still the ten-year-old child who was dropped into his lap by Ar-Amu or the Force. That was something he hadn’t expected, back then, that the withdrawal would make his Jaieh cold. Nobody felt cold unless they were dying on Tattooine. It didn’t even get properly cold at night like he now knows most deserts do. “Anything, sweetheart.”

Taking a deep breath, he makes the plunge. “What does it feel like? All,” he gestures to the trembling hands, pale face, ruffled hair, “this.”

“Ah,” murmurs Obi-Wan quietly, “should’ve known you’d ask eventually.” He stands, Anakin held easily as a rag-doll in his arms, and he squeaks, eyeing the floor and clinging tight. They sit on the sofa, surrounded by many emotions but most of all love in the Force. “It’s like... Imagine that you’re in the desert. And you can’t see anything, but you know where to go. You can go back, to where you came from, to the short-term solution, or keep going, even though it’ll be harder, because at the other side of the desert is the life you want. And you’re turning in circles because going back would be easy and you want it and it tells you that it has all the solutions, even though you mostly know it doesn’t. You still want to go back.”

Anakin is quiet, thinking.

“Conventiently, that’s exactly how the Dark Side works, so. Consider this a lesson in control.”

He tips back, trusting in his father-teacher-brother to hold him in his strong arms and not let him topple, so that he can watch his face. “Why is it taking so long? I’ve been here three years, and you gave them up when I came, but you still have to fight like this. It doesn’t seem fair.”

Obi-Wan strokes his hair. “I’m proud of you for asking, and happy that you are wise enough to have known I wouldn’t have liked answering back in the beginning.” He runs a hand through his reddish hair. “It’s because deathsticks affect the midichlorians in our bodies. So, where a non-jedi or lesser sensitive person in my situation would be dead by now, I am not, but I also have to fight the addiction harder, because I have so many more midis.”

“You would have died?” cries Anakin, aghast. His Jaieh is silent. 

_xi_

“Ani,” says Aayla from the kitchen. There’s something hard and hidden about her voice. “Anakin.”

He drops the duster and heads through, ready to ask what’s wrong, but the words fall out of his throat when he sees what she’s found.

The shreds of a deathstick pack. The torn edges have been slightly burned, but there’s enough fingernail-sized shreds left for them to know exactly what it is, and why. 

Obi-Wan.

His cousin presses her blue hand to his, drawing him into a hug when he makes a tight noise, eyes still fixed on the flimsy. “Maybe it was just the packet?”

They both know that it wasn’t. If it was just some litter he’d picked up he would’ve thrown it into a bin, not carried it home with him, which is a much more Anakin sort of habit. His pockets are always full of detritus. For a minute, they just stand together and stare down at the damming evidence. He’s nearly as tall as her now. “So... Are you gonna bring this up or do we tell our adults?”

“We can’t tell the Council,” he says quickly, too quickly, and his cousin leans back, narrows her eyes at him. “Look, we’re on thin ice after the last mission with you two, and you know they’re watching him.”

Aayla rolls her eyes. “They want to help. All they’d do is cooperate with the Healers, and that’d mean Bant and maybe Vokara and you.”

He shakes his head and grips her shoulders. “Not telling mum either, not yet. We should – he’ll be home soon, right?” The schedule on the wall tells them he should be. “He always comes back quick after the Jar’kai tutoring, because the littles are in next, right? So we’ll just, wait and talk to him.” It’s a solid plan, way more sandproof than some of their past schemes. They just need to wait. 

“Sweetheart? I just passed Madame Nu, she said to tell you the novel you’ve been waiting for has arrived,” calls Obi-Wan as he enters, not even passed into the main room of the apartment before he starts the conversation. Evidently he’s had a good day. “I was wondering if you and – ah.” He’s seen them, and the shreds of ashy card-flimsy on the table mat in front of them. It’s hard, but if you know his face, the whole cycle of grief can be seen passing over during this type of confrontation. “Ah.”

_xii  
_

Anakin is seventeen and he knows more about how to hide than any child should, and he knows that Obi-Wan knows more about to distract attention than he’s comfortable being aware of. Tonight they’re going to a gala.

He is afraid.

He has a lovely cloak to wear, the humble demure Padawan-cut in rich brown that blends them in, that encourages the eyes to slide away, and he’s grateful for it. Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan is dressed far more...well, seductively, than Anakin is comfortable letting him be.  
“Are you really wearing that?”

Obi-Wan leans closer to his mirror, tipping his head left-then-right to check the subtle flicks of his eyeliner. He needn’t bother. They’re always perfect. “Yes, sweetheart.”

Next comes the robes, perfect and unwrinkled and a perfect mastery-fit with flowing sleeves and billowing cloak, and the leather belt to accent his trim waist, and the lightsaber. Where Anakin would hide, his master – his big brother, his father even – is making himself seen. “I don’t want you to wear that.”

“I am so very proud of you for expressing that,” smiles Obi-Wan, setting the make-up box down and pressing his hand to Anakin’s shoulder, “but I really must insist.”

“You want them to think they can – can –“

“Hush, darling. You don’t need to finish the thought.”

He does, but he won’t, because he’s been given an out, and he’s taking it with both hands. Obi-Wan tugs on his boots, carefully wiping away a nearly-invisible mark: compared to his master Anakin feels positively underdressed. Everything about his Jaieh is shining and perfect and unmarried and just the hint of rogueishness that attracts attention and makes people want to agree with whatever silvered words fall from his lips. He looks like the Siren in the folk tale. 

“Are you dressed, my dear?” 

Anakin nods. 

“Let’s go, then, before we both chicken out.”

Their eyes feel like they’re trying to stare through his robes and trace his body. He resists the urge to wrap his arm around his stomach, or to straight up hide under his Jaieh’s cloak like he’s nine years old again, and stands straight but not intrusively, chin humble-low but not overly submissive. A student. A child.  
Unimportant. Still, though, he feels the eyes. If he feels this, just what does Obi-Wan feel? They haven’t even got into the party yet. 

There is Uncle Quin, waiting for them as promised, rakish and roguish and always a sure hit. It’s as if he and Obi are two halves of a coin, one the debaucher and one to be debauched. And he doesn’t ever intend to have that thought again (he will, he will, every event they come to). Aayla is not coming. He wishes she was, even just to hide in the freshers with him until their dads are done working the room.

“Ready, Obes?”

His Jaieh snorts. “Nope. Dying for a smoke.”

A heavy clap on the shoulder from the kiffar. “You’re strong. Ben, my brother.”

Obi takes a deep breath. “Ben.”

They enter. Obi-Wan and Quinlan are now the Master Jedi, forbidden – or so many believe – fantasies, and they’re, well, beautiful. Obi shaved for the occasion, and he looks young under his short neat beard, and innocent, and Anakin tries to suppress the number rising from his child-brain of worth and market value because he doesn’t want to think of it. He hates seeing how people stop in their conversations, how heads crane and eyes widen, how people lean into his Jaieh’s space.

But at least nobody is looking at him anymore, and he skulks to the back of the room where he sees a pair of aides he recognises and who will play stupid games with him to pass the time.

_xiii  
_

“You and your son will wait in here. Put the kid in shackles, this one isn’t going anywhere,” the boss orders, flicking long pale fingers towards the locks of the heavy bars. It’s all very archaic, down here in an actual dungeon like the ones in the historical mockups his drama group does back home in the Temple, black stone and tall rugged columns of rock too narrow to hide behind. Anakin yells as his Jaieh falls to the floor where he is thrown, limp like a rag doll. The stone is Force dampening – not blocking, not to him, but to his Jaieh? To Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is not inherently powerful like he is, who has worked for every ounce of ability and exceeded expectations, it must be stifling, suffocating. 

“Let us out,” he orders, but they just laugh at him and leave and he is on his own with his Jaieh and they’re stuck, trapped, chained up and it’s so cold. 

Under the impact of a blow of solid Force, the room tremors. He flinches, terrified. What if they never escape? What if they’re locked in here forever with the stick of the deathsticks tacking in his lungs? He feels sick.

“Obi?”

No response except a jolt, almost like a seizure, and he is so frightened because he hasn’t learned this, he’s only on the first year and his focus is pediatry not trauma response and this is definitely trauma response. He can’t even work out what’s going on, why this is happening – a response to second-hand smoke? What do seizures do to the brain, what was the relationship between them and Force Deprivation, he can’t quite remember and it’s horrible, he’s failing, he must protect his Jaieh. 

“Obi! Wake up!”

But his beloved Jaieh is once more limp, eyes darting unnaturally fast behind the closed lids. 

“Anakin,” the man rasps. 

“Yes! I’m here!” He strains against the bars as if he can bend them with his meagre body-weight and reach the man who raised him, his Jaieh, the closest to a dad he has or ever will have. “Wake up!”

“You were my brother, Anakin,” sobs his Jaieh, body curling into a tight ball, “I loved you.”

A vision? It must be a vision, that’s the only thing he can think of. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he promises, trying to remember when he was little and used to lie in bed listening to his Uncles or to Mum or to Siri as they comforted his Jaieh through the trembling withdrawal. 

He sits pressed to the bars for hours until every part of him is stiff with the chill; the visions have not faded, not even slightly, leaving Obi-Wan railing and crying and even screaming, screaming for a woman called Satine, and swearing revenge, revenge, revenge, in a voice that echoed in his skull.

They have to escape, they have to. Anakin doesn’t know what they’ll do if they have to be here any longer, what sort of trauma this will leave on his Jaieh’s brain. Reciting his pediatry textbooks only fills so much of a silence, especially when he can’t access the Force to do the exercises that are part of their basic training. 

“Listen well and follow my voice,” he says, deciding to try and fill the silence and ground his Jaieh, “back before the world grew old...”

_xiv  
_

He wakes up.

Huh.

That definitely shouldn’t have happened. He distinctly remembers Vader/Anakin providing the last push for him to join the Force, or what little he could sense of it, after practically two decades of skulking around the galaxy and smoking or drinking his bad memories away. 

Oh. He can sit up. Okay. This is his room on the Negotiatior. He knows this, because there’s the dent that Quinlan left when trying to show him a flip, because Quin is an idiot, and he loves him anyway. Wait – if this is the Negotiator, this is the war. If this is the war, Quin is still alive. Bant is still alive.

They’re all.... They’re all alive. Right?

He’s pretty closed off from the Force, in the way that is the result of his trademark horrendously unhealthy levels of shielding and a stick or two before bed. So, if he just teases open his shields, just a touch, just enough to see a sliver of daylight, then –

Oh.

He’d forgotten.

_Hello?_

_Obi! Are you alright? What happened? Where did you go?_

_I... I don’t.. A vision, I think?  
_

Now he’s waking up, the sensations of that future-time are fading. That’s one fuck of a vision, to be that strong. Or maybe he’s built up a tolerance to sticks. That would be pretty likely, really, which is something he’ll have to bring up to Bant, when he goes home and she gives him that look and drags all his guilt out like lancing a wound. Okay. Next step. Anakin. His child is still here, and is loitering nervously. 

“Obi-Wan?”

And at the careful inquiry of that unforgettable voice he is a mid-twenties mess of a Knight with a kid to raise and living with his friends for his own good and shaking shivering broken into shreds, everything falling around him. 

“Ani?” he responds, lost, weak and shivering. 

The door opens slowly. “Are you okay?”

No. “I’m... I’m cold.”

His child, so much taller than him and slender in the way of the young, slides into the bed beside him and tucks the blankets in. “That’s okay,” he soothes, the hand with the Healer’s Mark tattooed across it in red smoothing the hair from his forehead. “I’ll warm you up.”

Oh, gods, he cries, cries for the memories of the vision that, perhaps, wasn’t only a vision, and the memories of when Anakin was just a little boy who was trying his damned best to hold on to the new family he’d found. Half of him is screaming, trying to escape, but his body is a leaden weight, and Anakin is here, warm, alive, loving, nothing but tenderness and that childlike adoration he hasn’t yet outgrown and the urge to protect and heal that Bant has been nurturing.

**Author's Note:**

> Section iv is just... Eh, and xiv is even worse, so I'll post them next time.


End file.
